<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>too young to be messed with (see it all now) by lonelier_version_of_you</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29862528">too young to be messed with (see it all now)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelier_version_of_you/pseuds/lonelier_version_of_you'>lonelier_version_of_you</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Holby City</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(I mean I actually see both Henrik and Jac as at least a little genderqueer but I digress), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Episode: s22e40 (Holby City), Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Male-Female Friendship, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Sexual Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Relationship Study</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 00:55:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,910</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29862528</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelier_version_of_you/pseuds/lonelier_version_of_you</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jac comes down to Keller to consult on a patient. In the process, she finds Henrik in the consultant's office, having a panic attack... and he finally opens up about the secret he's spent his life keeping.</p><p>Set right after S22E40, but in an AU where Jac is still at the hospital.</p><p>(As this is based on Henrik's current storyline, and Jac's past experiences, there is a lot of discussion of sexual abuse, rape and assault. You have been warned.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Henrik Hanssen &amp; Jac Naylor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>too young to be messed with (see it all now)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, while I don't blame Rosie for choosing to leave Holby at all (the way they treated her was horrendous), it really bothers me that Jac isn't here for Henrik's CSA storyline. Given both their friendship and her own history, I really feel like she needs to be involved. So I wrote this.</p><p>Honestly, I'm not a big fan of this fic. There are some parts I'm proud of, but overall I feel it's far from my best work. But I'm posting it anyway and hoping other people like it.</p><p>This is <em>mostly</em> canon compliant (so far), except 1. Jac's still there and 2. I'm ignoring the whole Fredrik retcon because I didn't like it and it adds nothing to the story.</p><p>Title borrowed from Dear John by Taylor Swift.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Henrik can’t breathe.</p><p>He can’t stop shaking, fighting for breath, tears forming in his eyes.</p><p>He thought it was <em>over</em>.</p><p>His time at boarding school was so many years ago now, and he supposes that after almost half a century, he had started taking for granted the thought that he was <em>free</em>.</p><p>After he left that school, he thought he would never have to see Reyhan Shah ever again. It had thrown something of a wrench in his plans when he met Sahira and eventually found out just who her dad was (Sahira had happily informed him one day that she’d told her father about her mentor – she was <em>excited </em>to point out that he was teaching her just like her father had taught him), but even then, he had managed to avoid ever having to physically see the man again or have anything to do with him.</p><p>Until today.</p><p>He isn’t ever going to be able to move on from this, is he? He will <em>always</em> be Reyhan’s victim. He’ll always be a victim, always be broken and tainted and <em>unclean</em>. No matter how much he tries to fool himself, he will never truly escape Reyhan, never escape what happened to him. Reyhan will always come back to haunt him eventually.</p><p><em>Even when the man’s dead,</em> Henrik thinks, <em>I still won’t be free.</em></p><p>(There had been some tiny part of him, when he was looking down at Reyhan unconscious on that operating table today, that said <em>just go ahead and let him die, they’ll think you tried your best, you have your chance to finally punish him, it’s nothing compared to what he did to you, there’s a reason they call <strong>it</strong> the fate worse than death</em>.</p><p>Henrik almost wanted to go through with it, even if it would have been a far cleaner and far less painful death than Reyhan Shah deserves, but stopped himself for Sahira’s sake. Sahira, after all, is innocent, and she doesn’t deserve to lose her father.)</p><p>All these years later, he can still recall the feeling of Reyhan’s hands touching his body. He may have moved away before Reyhan could touch him this time, but it doesn’t matter, because the phantom pains linger. He feels so <em>dirty</em>, and he wants to claw his skin off, wants to free himself from every last trace of the man who hurt him.</p><p>Henrik swallows back a sob. His body is still trembling, he still can’t breathe, and the tears are still running down his face.</p><p>He feels someone push at the door, then hears a knock, and for a moment, in his panic, he jumps to the worst possible scenario. He holds his breath, staying as still as he can. If he acts like he isn’t there, maybe Reyhan will assume he isn’t there and leave him alone, and he won’t try to touch him again.</p><p>Then he hears a voice call out – a voice that sounds a lot more like Jac Naylor’s than Reyhan Shah’s, which makes Henrik sigh with relief. “Henrik? I know you’re in there. Move out of the way so I can let myself in.”</p><p>Henrik wonders, for a moment, whether he should comply with the request. Finally, he decides that he’d rather let Jac catch him in this state now than let someone he doesn’t know as well catch him later. So he steps to the side, and lets her open the door.</p><p>The first thing Jac does after entering the office is look at him without a word. It doesn’t surprise Henrik, not really. He must look such a mess, he thinks – his face is surely blotched red from crying, there are marks left on his glasses, and he can still feel tears leaking out.</p><p>“Sorry I didn’t...” he begins awkwardly. “I thought you were someone else.”</p><p>“What the hell is going on, Henrik?” Jac questions him. “I came down here to consult on a patient, and I heard you <em>crying</em>.”</p><p>The way she says it, to the untrained ear, might sound like a complaint, or even anger. But Henrik has known Jac long enough to hear the unspoken ‘<em>this isn’t like you, and I’m worried</em>’.</p><p>“It’s nothing,” Henrik says, quietly. The thought of having to explain everything with Reyhan is too much. He’s not sure he can go over everything without starting to cry again.</p><p>“If it’s bad enough that you’re having some kind of nervous breakdown in the consultants’ office, it’s clearly not ‘nothing’,” Jac argues.</p><p>“Someone I used to know many years ago turned up on Keller today, in need of treatment. I can’t say I particularly wanted to see him, and certainly not to operate on him.”</p><p>“Oh, God. Let me guess, he was your ex? Ended on bad terms?”</p><p>Henrik doesn’t know how to answer that. “Not quite. I don’t think you’d really want to hear about it.”</p><p>“If you’re this upset, I’d rather hear about it than have you tell no one and run away from your feelings for the thousandth time.”</p><p>“You’re one to talk.”</p><p>“If you’re not going to tell me, then tell <em>someone</em>. Because we certainly don’t need you going AWOL again.”      </p><p>Henrik is silent for a while, trying to decide what to say. Trying to decide whether he can even get the words out. He’s only ever told one person about <em>any</em> of this before, and that was during a drunken breakdown at university thirty-three years ago. John Gaskell is long dead now, anyway, so the only people alive who know what happened are Henrik and Reyhan himself.</p><p>And now, Henrik supposes, Jac.</p><p>He takes a deep breath. “The patient right through there – Reyhan Shah...”</p><p>“Sahira’s father?”</p><p>Henrik nods. “I do believe I’ve told you I went to a boarding school as a child?”</p><p>“Yes,” Jac affirms.</p><p>“Mr. Shah was one of the teachers there. I was desperately lonely, at the time; it wasn’t long after my mother’s death, and my father was barely back in my life for five minutes before he shipped me off to England. Of course, now I know what he didn’t want me to find out,” Henrik adds, “but at the time, I thought I’d done something wrong. The children at school never liked me much. Not in Sweden, and certainly not in England – all these posh young Christian lads who knew exactly how to behave and what to do, and I was the awkward, foreign, Jewish boy who didn’t even share so much as a first language with them and could hardly grasp the social rules of my <em>own</em> country, let alone theirs.”</p><p>“Mm-hm.”</p><p>“So I was a very isolated child indeed. And Reyhan Shah... he paid a great deal of attention to me.”</p><p>“Is this going where it sounds like it’s going?”</p><p>“He always told me how intelligent I was. That he knew I would go far. That I was ‘special’ and his ‘star pupil’ – in his words. I found it all comforting, at the time. It was no replacement for parental love, nor for friendships with my peers, but he made me feel... important. And cared about. At the time, I might have even said I felt <em>loved</em>. And then...” Henrik stops, for a moment, his voice faltering. The memories are too painful to recall. He deliberately quiets his voice, to make certain nobody else hears. “And then he started touching me. I didn’t mind at first, because I trusted him, and it was friendly gestures. Hugs, or a pat on the back. But it escalated. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how the rest of my time at boarding school went.”</p><p>Jac doesn’t say anything, but Henrik swears he can see a glimmer of understanding in her eyes. As though she already knew.</p><p> “You’re not surprised,” he whispers, “are you?”</p><p>Jac shakes her head. “No.”</p><p>“Am I that obvious? Do all the staff in this hospital assume I was molested as a child?” Henrik keeps his question as deadpan as it can be in his still-hushed tone, but there is some degree of genuine fear to it. He knows it’s terribly unlikely that anyone else has figured his secret out, but he doesn’t think he could bear with anybody else knowing what happened to him. He can’t bear the thought of being looked at with pity, as some broken, tainted object instead of a person.</p><p>That may be how he feels about himself, but having someone else look at him that way would be much worse.</p><p>“No,” Jac assures him. This is usually the kind of place in a conversation where Jac would make some sarcastic remark, Henrik thinks, but right now, she’s quiet and serious. “Trust me, Henrik, I’ve heard people say a lot of things about you, but never anything like that. And I’ve kept my speculations to myself. Despite what some people in this hospital might tell you, there <em>are</em> some lines I won’t cross.”</p><p>That comforts Henrik somewhat. If someone had to figure it out, he does greatly prefer Jac to most of the other options.</p><p>Because Henrik doesn’t know the details of what happened to Jac, but he knows enough. He knows the near-imperceptible change in her expression when the topic of rape or sexual assault is mentioned; he knows her distrust of men; he knows that she’s just as scared of true intimacy with anyone as he is, even if she’s better at covering it up.</p><p>He knows enough to know she understands.</p><p>“He told me he wants to get to know me again,” Henrik admits. “Reminded me that I was <em>his special boy</em>. He even wanted to hold my hand. As though he had some sort of God-given <em>right</em> to me. All these years later and he hasn’t changed at all.”</p><p>“Men like him never do.”</p><p>Henrik nods without a word. Jac’s right, he knows. But he supposes that somewhere in the back of his mind, he had foolishly hoped that Reyhan was different now. That maybe he would even apologise.</p><p>“I’m sorry he turned up,” Jac says.</p><p>Henrik stares down at the floor. He feels too ashamed to look at Jac right now. “When I was in theatre today, I almost wanted to let him die. I wanted to punish him for what he did to me. I would never have actually done it, you understand, but I... I would be a liar if I said I didn’t think about it.”</p><p>“I would have thought the exact same thing.”</p><p>“You would have thought about letting Mr. Shah die?” Henrik asks. He doesn’t say ‘...<em>or do you mean whoever hurt <strong>you</strong>?</em>’ out loud.</p><p>“Knowing what he did to you, absolutely.” After a moment, Jac adds, with a bit more of her usual bite: “Hell, if you want me to do you a favour...”</p><p>“I’m not sure it would be worth the legal trouble we might find ourselves in,” Henrik replies.</p><p>“You’re right. I can’t kill him, much as I’d like to. But I <em>can</em> try and convince Sahira that her dad would get better care at St. James’s, if you want. You don’t have to treat him.”</p><p>“She’s already got her heart set on me, I’m afraid. There’s no chance she’d even consider a transfer.”</p><p>At that moment, Jac’s pager beeps. “Well, Darwin needs me.”</p><p>As Jac gets up to leave, Henrik quickly informs her: “You can’t tell anyone. None of this can ever leave this room.”</p><p>“It won’t,” Jac promises.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>